With possessiveness I never know, which comes first.
The jealousy? Or the lies? But in whichever order they arrive
the result is always more of the same. A sinking spiral
where one feeds into the other which ends the death of trust.

Saturday, 30 January 2016

This 'painting' is by Andy Warhol. He made his work easy to admire at a distance and hard to like close up. But then again, seemingly, he combined a strong work ethic with his own variation on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder long before ADHD was a well known acronym. I like this picture for the simplicity with which it was made. Take several sheets of metal, lay them flat in an large open space, urinate upon them in different patterns and leave the elements to do the work of discolouring the metal. Later select the best patterns. He never gave them titles beyond calling his selection 'The oxidisation series'. If you were inclined to puns you could call the series 'Taking the piss', because that is what the metal did, as if they were some sideways take on Duchamp's 1918 'Urinal' installation. To me they are more quietly aesthetic than Duchamp excercise, and quite natural to life.....

Friday, 29 January 2016

Millions of people believe themselves
to be among The Elect, ready at any time
to recieve their rewards from their maker,
in The Rapture. Apparently ready to leave
all the decay, 'unworthyness' and those
'works of the flesh' which flourish then fade.

But I have no truck with that ill tempered spirit
inside The Elect that calls itself 'perfection',
nor do I accept the binary logic said spirit employs,
which has only one message through which to affirm
-'I am right-you are wrong,
and my being right is all that counts'.

Heaven's existence has to be taken on trust
if it is to inspire, and its fruit will be diversity.
For Heaven to be it has to prove to those that are,
here and now. Saints are proved by their generosity.

The bluff of The Self Elect is not for me,
except as the talk of tricksters, figures
who disguise themselves to fool the unwary.

Thursday, 28 January 2016

Speaking from a privileged position
often turns into gloating, and it happens
when the speaker is unaware
of both the depth of their privilege
and how this causes them to speak
with ignorance and condescension.

Since bile is part of human nature
I prefer the targets of my bitterness
to be out-of-scale human inventions,
like multi national corporations
whose open lack of soulwill corrupt individuals,
and smaller social structures
forced to be dependent on them,
along with as many government officials
as they need to keep on-side,
to over-defend themselves well.

My belief in the individual
is what gives me the best chance
of being recieved by similar
-individuals who will believe in me.

Sunday, 24 January 2016

A german journalist
at the Frankfurt book fair
asked Art Spiegelman
on the publication 'Maus'
'Isn't it in bad taste to make
a comic book of Auschwitz?'
'No' Spiegelman replied,
'Auschwitz was in bad taste'.

Saturday, 23 January 2016

War is as old as time
because the measurement of time
was started started by war
-by one person measuring the depth
and quality of their own life
by how much they could take
the same out of other people.

Friday, 22 January 2016

It might seem that we live in a bright new digital democracy
when from our fingertips we send each other messages of ease
and change from the comfort of our lap tops and i-phones.
But like direct democracy vs representative democracy
-where we get to vote once every five years or so-
real change can only come from direct action, not an X in a box.
Signing online petitions are okay but rarely help any cause
as much as the petitioners say it does-though sometimes
the right money in the right places has a positive effect.

Thursday, 21 January 2016

Only recently did I realise that A. I. means
both Artificial Insemination, an activity
that farmers and vets do regularly with cows
to get them to bear milk for our consumption,
and Artificial Intelligence.

Humans often express the fear
that they might create a technology
that proves more intelligent
than are prepared to credit.
Humans are also highly blind
to the discomfort they force
on animals who, if they let them live,
force into sequential pregnancies.

How much do we fear
that the technology that comforts us
will ultimately do to us
what we force cows to do?

Wednesday, 20 January 2016

It is odd how for the monotheistic faiths
faith in The Word
becomes their blind spot for the world.
The Word is their book, the place
where the present is bound to the past,
to create their sense of the future.

And for the most faithful, the theocratic,
their past has to be made to account
for everything and everyone, particularly
those nearbly with different histories to theirs.
Thus Faith in history curdles into remaking
other peoples pasts in the light of your own.

Tuesday, 19 January 2016

Everyone know how we feel older
when old friends die before we do.
We lose the joy in the person's voice
we heard on the other end of the phone.

But do we feel older still at the deaths
of our enemies? The energy spent on hate
over a lifetime will suddenly feel pointless
as its target dies of their own accord,
rather than any fate we had in mind for them....

Monday, 18 January 2016

Contrary to the claims of many families
home is not the house we were raised in,
but it is anywhere where right now our lives
can be lifted above the level of the mundane
by the company we keep-and sustained that way.

Sunday, 17 January 2016

In error C. S. Lewis is credited with the phrase
'You don't have a soul, you are a soul because have a body'.Whoever said it first is mis-quoted with a purpose.

Those who misquote it do so to open up two questions.
The first is rather rhetorical-
'Do animals have a greater depth of sentience
than our lack of humility allows us to admit?
The second is more open, 'If Eternity is real,
then how much might it be as real for animals
as it seems to those humans who accept it?'

Some believe in Eternity for themselves
but disavow other humans the possibility,
others disavow it for all, including themselves,
smugly believing that consistency in disbelief
is more consistent than anything else could be.

For the inclusively minded, unafraid of unreason,
the attraction of Eternity is that don't have to know
who will get there, or why, but for all who arrive
they will have all-new bodies that won't decay.

The fear of humans resistant to belief
is of being seen by any Heavenly Host
who looks after their every care as similar
to how they see many animals-attractive.
But by design lacking some vital life-force
through which to be rightly autonomous.

But to those who accept 'being inferior'
their Heavenly Host will be fairer to them
than ever they could have been to each other
when they had force of choice in their former lives.

Friday, 15 January 2016

Here at Zombies Inc, the call centre
where whatever the public share
the script on the screen is always right,
we know that the recorded apologies
over the crass commercial music
that you hear before you get to us
are the apogee of insincerity
but they exist as a warning
-to prove how little we care.

Since we want to be market leaders
we trust that our customers
will come to see that we are right.
When everyone fakes their own sincerity
for themselves we will all be alright
-regardless of the consequences.

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

is teaching people how to put themselves in the 'emit' mode
of communicaton - e.g. giving orders, rather than in 'recieve',
whilst creating the impression with those they are with
that they are there to try to listen to what others might think.

To forgive is to choose to swallow
when you would rather spit.
When such a throat reflex
comes from someones heart
it proves that their self control
is greater than the those
who need is to be forgiven.

Sunday, 10 January 2016

I'll never understand how human birth families
think how they are they are the number one choice
for networking, for health, and for wealth
when the world is in a fragile state
and there are so many other kinds of bonds
which also create communities and networks
whose greater flexibility than family
and more forgiving nature is their strength.

Saturday, 9 January 2016

1-Your musical heroes, artists
you have liked since your youth
and from their early maturity,
rarely release new material
but they will release new albums
on their birthdays, because-
for generally creating fewer headlines-
that is when the popular press
most remembers their existence.

2-Holding old grudges more lightly
than you used to, but never letting
go of them-if you did let them go
then you never know where
the person you held them against
might bury the hatchet
in pursuit of their personal peace.

Friday, 8 January 2016

For those of us who assume a clean consciencebecause we worry so much, a shadow is no morethan something attached to us, exposed to alland sundry by our blocking out the natural light.

In the past people lived well by writingbut in these present internet led timeswriting has diminished in value-to the pointwhere we thinkthe internet us rather morethan than usual toil by natural light.

With every small munitiae we leavewe create a new kind of shadow,which remains for the future to puzzle over.

Thursday, 7 January 2016

I often read the opinions of Republicans
in many countries decrying their government
from the position of opposition, via the press.
They snipe at the actions of those in power
as if with their new wealth, but no power,
they feel it is right to publicly complain
about perceived threats to their privilege.

If those complaining got their way
what would they replace the current lot with?
A new system that was at least as badly bent,
the better to improve reasons for complaining?

Tuesday, 5 January 2016

On this day, widely known as 'Fat Cat Tuesday',
the day when collectively UK based City Bankers
give themselves more in annual bonuses
than the annual wage of every ordinary citizen
in the country combined, it is worth noting
how we all detach, each from the other
and whatever we have we can, and will, use
to separate ourselves from other people.

This activity of detaching is something
we have no unit of measurement for,
any more than we have ways of measuring
how some folk insist on being deferred to.

But it must be said that the more money anyone has
the more detached they will be from those with less.
And the rich will arrange it that they are not even seen
to be detached from the society and community
that creates their weath by determining that their money
(a measure of their detachment) should remain un-discussed.
They want to become invisible, as they set up
nearly everybody else as 'well underneath them'.

Monday, 4 January 2016

I am mildly bored with all the anecdotes
about the number and variety of animal species
that occasionally exhibit homosexual behaviour,
concocted to tell me that affections between humans
of the same gender 'are completely natural'.

I am looking for the future in deep science
-gay behaviour in plants which prove that affections
between people of the same gender are quite natural
but also that homosexuality need not be camp and noisy.

Friday, 1 January 2016

When I was old enough to acceptbeing shut up and made to listenI was frequently told how muchmy good manners were requiredto support the local social order.Whatever others said and did against it.

When I was older and I could answer backI found that the cards were stacked,against me. A gentleman was a malewho was readily deferred to. UndeclaredI had become a pansy, a homosexual,because everyone refused to defer to me.

But a gentleman is not just someonewho is deferred to, but also a personwho takes their complaint to its sourceand to become a proper gentlemanly pansy I 'came out' to myself, and to all around me.Particularly my family who were the last peopleon earth who wanted me to know I was gay.They already knew it and didn't support me.

I became much younger for no longer hiding,and I have stopped myself being pushed aroundIn the same way I now resist giving other peoplecause for gossip, after the years of self doubt.I am visible, and don't let people blank me out.